Independent research on the economics of live music.

Omar Afra

Live Index was founded by Omar Afra, a Houston publisher and live-event producer. He published Free Press Houston, an independent Houston paper, and produced Free Press Summer Fest and later Day for Night, festivals that brought large-scale music and art programming to the city. That work put the practical economics of live events at close range: what tickets cost, what rooms and sites cost to operate, what crews are paid, and how much of a city's cultural infrastructure rests on organisations running thin margins. He now researches live-music economics full time — ticket affordability, venue economics, festival economics, cultural infrastructure and the independent systems that sustain them — and edits what Live Index publishes. His author page is maintained as a sourced dossier, with a citation behind each claim and disagreements between sources preserved rather than smoothed over.

Full sourced profileResearch and bylinesAll contributors

Attribution

Every research document names its authors and their contribution roles, and links to the same canonical author record used in our structured data.

A figure that cannot be checked is not evidence.

National indicators are stored exactly as the statistical agencies publish them, with the source agency, series identifier, source URL, observation period and retrieval date carried onto the page. Any calculation Live Index performs on top of them is arithmetic that a reader can reproduce from the same stored levels.

Original research states its sources, its limits and its revisions. Corrections are dated and kept permanently so that previously cited figures remain traceable.

Methodology and sourcesAbout Live Index

Standards

• Methodology→
• Data & Sources→
• Artificial Intelligence→
• Editorial Standards→
• Corrections→